An acre at a time, Finger Lakes Land Trust preserves chunks of Central New York

Ellen Blaylock / The Post-StandardA view of Skaneateles Lake from Route 41 in the Cortland County town of Scott captured Oct. 22 looks similar to a century-old painting of that same view by artist John D. Barrow. Skaneateles, NY - In the past 20 years, the Finger Lakes Land Trust has grown into a non-profit organization with land holdings and conservation easements spread across 11 Upstate counties, gross receipts in 2008 of $2.7 million and net assets of $7.6 million.

Not bad for an organization that started out as a Cornell University master’s degree project. To date, the land trust has protected more than 10,000 acres of wetlands, forests, farmland, grassland and gorges in the region.

Cornell graduate student Andrew Zepp, who is now executive director of the organization he started in 1989, was in Skaneateles in October to speak about the land trust’s new conservation plan for the highlands area at the southern end of Skaneateles Lake.

The presentation was made at the John D. Barrow Art Gallery, a site chosen because many of the paintings by the well-known 19th-century artist hanging in the gallery depict the rural countryside of his era.

Courtesy of John D. Barrow GalleryA John D. Barrow painting of Skaneateles Lake that hangs in the John D. Barrow Gallery in the Skaneateles Library.
During a follow-up tour of land trust holdings in Skaneateles, Zepp pulled off of Route 41 in the town of Scott and looked north over the lake. Barrow had painted the same view a century ago.

“The goal of the Finger Lakes Land Trust is that 100 years from now, we’ll still have this vista,” he said.

To achieve that goal, the land trust uses a combination of outright ownership — the trust owns 21 nature preserves — and conservation easements to protect the land.

The preserves, like the High Vista Preserve in the Cortland County town of Scott, are owned by the land trust and are open to the public for hiking, hunting and fishing. The easements allow the land trust to obtain, either through donation or purchase, future development rights.

DEC Region 7 Director Ken Lynch said the agency has worked closely with the group on several projects. A representative of the land trust is on the DEC’s local open space preservation committee, which identifies land to be protected.

“We have a great partnership with them,” Lynch said. “We

Ellen Blaylock / The Post-StandardCarpenter's Falls, located on Bear Swamp Creek about 11 miles south of Skaneateles, is owned by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. communicate to identify properties that need preservation and work with them, in cases like Carpenter’s Falls, where they are in a position to acquire it first before we take title.”

Zepp said the land trust tries to balance the need to preserve the region’s rural lands with the need for economic development.

“It’s just a recognition that you can’t make the Finger Lakes a big park,” he said. “People live here. There are communities. It’s a settled landscape. ... It’s trying to define consensus on which lands should be set aside ... and where the development should go.”

Unlike preservation efforts in the Adirondacks, which often involve thousands of acres, the work of the land trust “involves securing 20 acres plus 80 acres plus 50 acres and knitting it together,” he said.

By state law, the advisory board monitors how the Conservation Fund is used. The fund’s money comes from state license fees paid by sportsmen, fines and penalties and federal reimbursements.

“The key to successfully working with them is to negotiate the terms and conditions for the land trust very specifically to include rights for hunting, fishing and trapping,” Hancock said. “But it has to be on the table right from the beginning. ... In general, they’re willing to talk about it, and it’s a negotiable item.”

The land trust buys some property to protect it from development but accomplishes most of its work through conservation easements, which govern how the land can be used and become part of the title to the property. The easements are supposed to be binding on future owners.

“The real test is years down the road, when all the original actors have left the scene,” he said. “It’s up to the land trust or whoever holds the easement to ensure that it’s not just a piece of paper. We have to build the organization and create an endowment so if there are conflicts down the road we can stand up for the original agreement and the public trust.”

The paradox the region faces is that while population isn’t growing, development is slowly spreading across the land.

“Our challenge is not the 200-house subdivision,” he said. “It’s more the insidious nature of one day we’ll wake up and find we’ve forever changed the landscape parcel by parcel, house by house. What we to make sure is that we think about this and foster policies that would encourage the sensible use of land.”

That was a theme Barrow touched upon in an address he delivered in 1876, when the nation celebrated the centennial of its founding.

“May we all do something ... so that after another hundred years, our successors shall meet together and rejoice and thank us for what we have done,” Barrow said.